1. Field of the Invention
This application relates to filtering of search results in a computer application. More particularly, this application discloses a simplified search filter which is used to filter search results in a web browser without needing to reload page data from a web server.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many web-based applications allow users to search online databases for data by submitting a search request to a web server. Search results may be returned to the user's web browser and listed for viewing. In some applications, a large number of listed results are returned and the user may wish to filter the listed results so as to lessen the number of items to scan to find the content in which they are interested. Existing search filtering systems use multi-select menus that populate which each selection. These selection menus often take the form of a series of dropdown menus which allow the user to select filtering criterion from the offered menu selections. In some implementations, the dropdown menus are positioned such that a user may first make a selection from a first dropdown menu. The system then makes a request to the server to filter the options presented in the second dropdown based on the selection in the first dropdown menu. The user then makes a selection from the second dropdown menu, and submits the filtering request to the web server (by clicking a “SUBMIT” button for example). At that point, the web browser sends an HTTP POST command to the server specifying parameters with which to filter the search results. In response, the server sends a new page having only the results that satisfy the parameters selected from the dropdown menus. Thus, each selection made by the user requires a request be made to the server and the page to be reloaded in the browser window.